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24 Perth Guide
All events online | scoop.com.au
AroundTown
Like you, both your brothers are in creative fields. Were
you one of those arty families that was always putting on
plays and making stuff out of pasta?
Yep, one’s a writer and one’s a photographer. We half grew
up on a farm, about three-and-a -half hours outside of Perth,
and half in suburbia. There wasn’t a lot happening there, so
you kind of had to make your own fun.
How did you start getting into aerosol?
Just getting out like a little delinquent (laughs).
Did you have a signature tag, something like J-dawg?
Ha ha, I did! Something like that. But I played around with it
a bit and I got into WAAPA [for theatre-set building] based
on my graffiti, and they really pushed me to do it. From
there, I got my first commission in about 2010, and it’s all
been a bit crazy since then.
So tell me, how do you make your artwork look so real?
You’re there with a blank wall and a can, and a few hours
later it’s like there’s a real face there.
Sometimes I don’t even know. I was never really taught
a huge amount of art stuff but always wanted to paint
people’s faces, so I just tried it one day and it worked out.
It’s just attention to detail, and depth of field and scale, and
those three-dimensional things. It’s all trial and error, really.
Is it getting easier for you?
Yeah, but I still get frustrated. You get to a certain point
where it isn’t working out, it isn’t looking that good, but
then you just kind of push past it. It’s never a breeze or
a walk in the park. It’s still a challenge – because otherwise
what’s the point in doing it?
After a few hours, you must get tired of standing there
with a spray can...
Nah, I think you get into the zone. You realise you’ve done
eight to ten hours on it because you get picky with things
and keep going back, and don’t even bother taking lunch
Once a bored delinquent in the ‘burbs, Jerome Davenport is now one of Australia’s most promising street
artists (Banksy himself re-posted his work on Instagram). We talk to him about imperfection, being colour-blind,
and how Perth Guide helped his love life. Interview by Anna Christensen
TEN MINUTES WITH Jerome
Davenport
breaks and stuff. But it’s always good to walk away from
a piece and look at it again the next day. That’s art for
you – if you look at the same thing too long, you can’t see
what’s wrong with it.
A lot of your art features really gorgeous models, but then
you have a lot of regular people too, with freckles and
wrinkles. If you had to choose – perfection or imperfection?
Imperfection. Definitely. Freckles are amazing. They’re such
a good feature, but people are so self-conscious about them.
I prefer to paint people with a lot of character, with a depth
behind their stories that you can see in their faces – like if
I paint someone and you can see that they’ve had a troubled
life. That’s based on good photography too, if you have
a photo that’s captured the person at a certain point in life.
Jerome’s Face of Beaufort Street
at Barlee Street car park.